Crypto wallet provider Blockchain.com is seeking to partner with an unnamed stablecoin project by the end of 2019, the firm’s CEO Peter Smith revealed in an interview with crypto news agency The Block Jan. 21. According to the report, Blockchain.com has operated 100 million transactions since its inception back in 2011, and has originally raised $70 million from such companies as Digital Currency Group and Google Ventures.

The number of rigs drilling for oil in the U.S. fell to the lowest since May, according to Baker Hughes data. China and America, the world’s biggest oil consumers, have made little progress in talks on intellectual property, a major sticking point as they pursue a deal to end a tariff battle, according to people familiar with the discussions. “The price volatility seen over the latter part of last year certainly appears to have made producers hesitant to pick up drilling activity,” said Warren Patterson, senior commodities strategist at ING Bank NV.

China's ambassador last week threatened repercussions if Ottawa blocked Huawei, a warning the Canadian government dismissed. Canadian officials are studying the security implications of 5G networks, the latest generation of cellular mobile communications, but their report is not expected in the immediate future, a source close to the matter said last week. Richard Fadden, who served as the head of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service spy agency from 2009 to 2013, cited what he said was mounting evidence for blocking Huawei.

A suicide bomber attacked a convoy of US troops and their allies in Syria on Monday, killing five members of a Kurdish-led force fighting the Islamic State group, a monitor said. The assault, claimed by IS jihadists, came less than a week after another deadly attack on US forces in Syria, and a month after Washington announced a US troop pullout from the war-torn country. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said five fighters from the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces were killed in the blast on a road in northeastern Hasakeh province.

Recent layoffs at blockchain software technology company ConsenSys did not exceed 10 percent of staff. The company’s Executive Director of Enterprise and Social Impact Vanessa Grellet spoke to Cointelegraph about the recent developments at the Crypto Finance Conference in Switzerland on Jan. 18. Grellet said that the staff cuts were a “natural movement” and mainly affected support staff, while developers and technical employees were largely unaffected.

Dividends play a key role in compounding returns over time and can form a large part of our portfolio return. Historically, Lancaster Colony Corporation (NASDAQ:LANC) has been paying a dividend
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Decentralized Artificial Intelligence (AI) firm SingularityNET has announced a partnership with agriculture-focused blockchain startup Hara at the World Web Forum, according to a press release shared with Cointelegraph Jan. 21. Hara’s objective is reportedly to use blockchain to provide Indonesian farmers with useful data like grain price, soil quality and land ownership details. The newly announced partnership between the two firms aims to use this data to offer AI-powered crop diagnosis and data analytics to the ecosystem, according to the press release.

The International Monetary Fund trimmed its global growth forecasts on Monday and a survey showed increasing pessimism among business chiefs as trade tensions and uncertainty loomed over the world's biggest annual gathering of the rich and powerful. "After two years of solid expansion, the world economy is growing more slowly than expected and risks are rising," IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde told reporters. "Does that mean a global recession is around the corner?

The dollar was steady and bonds in Europe were mixed. With American markets shut for a holiday, there seemed to be little to inspire either contracts on the S&P 500 Index or the Stoxx Europe 600 Index, with the latter paring the worst of an early drop but still ending slightly down. News that the IMF was cutting its global growth forecast to the weakest in three years -- in part because of softening demand in Europe -- merely cemented an already downbeat mood.

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Los Angeles teachers returned to the negotiating table on Monday for the fifth day of contract negotiations with the country's second-largest school district in an effort to end a strike that has disrupted classes for some 500,000 students. More than 30,000 teachers walked off the job a week ago in their first strike against the Los Angeles Unified School District in three decades, demanding higher pay, smaller class sizes and the hiring of more support staff. The United Teachers Los Angeles union planned a news conference on Monday at 3:30 p.m. PT (2330 GMT) to update parents on whether students could expect schools to return to normal after Monday's Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday.

The European Union slapped sanctions on the two most senior officers in Russian military intelligence Monday and identified the two agents accused by Britain of carrying out a chemical attack. The EU accused the Russians -- two agents and the head and the deputy head of the GRU -- of orchestrating the "possession, transport and use" of the nerve agent used in Salisbury, England last March, in a failed attempt to assassinate a defector. The agents are accused of travelling under the pseudonyms Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, but the sanctions order confirms reports that identify them as Anatoly Chepiga and Alexander Mishkin, both 39 years old.

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Global elites descending on Davos for the World Economic Forum faced urgent warnings from Oxfam and the IMF on Monday that the international economy is at risk, as swelling inequality stokes public anger. The International Monetary Fund warned in an update to its global economic forecasts that US-China trade confrontations, Brexit and other sources of uncertainty were threatening to drag down global growth even further than its already pessimistic outlook published three months ago.

The head of one of the world's largest aircraft leasing companies has told leading planemakers to "get their house in order" and wipe out manufacturing delays before pushing already record production rates to even higher levels. SMBC Aviation Capital's chief executive, Peter Barrett, urged caution over production increases as he confirmed a new order for 65 Airbus A320neo-family aircraft to secure the Japanese-owned leasing company's growth well into the next decade. "We have been consistent with both manufacturers (Airbus and Boeing) in saying get deliveries right today ... get your production and delivery systems up to scratch," Barrett told Reuters.

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JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel on Monday claimed responsibility for a series of airstrikes on Iranian military targets in Syria, drifting further away from its longstanding policy of playing down or covering up its military activities in the war-torn country.

Your electric scooter could one day be autonomous.
Uber is working on self-driving scooters and bikes, according to 3DRobotics CEO Chris Anderson. The company announced plans to explore electric scooters and bikes that can drive themselves to charging stations and riders.
In a tweet on Saturday, Anderson revealed that the ride-hailing app is hiring engineers for "Micromobility Robotics" -- a division under JUMP, Uber's on-demand rideshare for bikes and scooters. Its main group, Uber Advance Technologies Group, will continue its work on self-driving cars.
> Exciting announcement from @UberATG at today's @DIYRobocars event. "Micromobility" = autononomous scooters & bikes that can drive themselves to charging or better locations. Hiring now pic.twitter.com/sOjroo8XZI
>
> -- Chris Anderson (@chr1sa) January 20, 2019 Read more...
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